This afternoon, the ESL FACEIT Group held a two-month tournament called DreamLeague Season 19. It saw the Gaimin Gladiators take the top honors. The team fought against many new faces and a lot of old rivals on the way, completing a guaranteed $300k winning bid and claiming a place in the Riyadh Masters Final Final at Gamers8 later this year. The organizers will explain how it went down this year. Read below below.
Credit: ESL Pro Tour.
“With elite squads from all over the world including Lima Major winners Gaimin Gladiators and reigning The International Champions Tundra Esports DreamLeague group is the first one to start on April 9. The 16 teams participated in the individual round-robin competition with all matches being best-of-two. In this stage, five teams went unbeaten: Gaimin Gladiators, Shopify Rebellion, Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid and Beastcoast. In Group Two, eight qualified teams were united in the same group, where they fought in a best-of-three round-robin format. Here, the eight teams were cut to four, as Team Liquid, Gaimin Gladiators, Shopify Rebellion and Tundra Esports all had to. Both team Liquid and Gaimin Gladiators dominated this stage, with six-1 records at the end of Group 2.”
In the finals, the rest of the four teams were eliminated, winning the best-of-three competition, with Liquid and Gaimin Gladiators finishing fourth in the highest-of-five Grand Finals. After the Grand Finale, the Gladiators of the Gaimin have won first round before Team Liquid got through with round two to secure a close tie. However, in the third round, Gaimin Gladiators were picked up where they left in the first round to get 2-1. The defeat against Team Liquid led to a stunning fourth defeat. This forced the gambiters to drop from game three to set up the gambite match where the gambits swept away a 3-2 win. A group of Gladiators took a 3-4 record in Groupe One. They finished second in Group 2 just behind the Team Liquid. In the Upper Bracket Finale, Team Liquid beaten them 2-0, and then went to the Lower Bracket Final, where they beat Shopify Rebellion by the same score to set up the Grand Final with Team Liquid.
